We were lucky the privacy glass offered a split second of protection against the rounds that suddenly punched through it, allowing in the thudding sound of rifle fire. The first bullet caught Lo in the left side of the head. His skull snapped toward me absorbing the last of the slug’s kinetic energy before it could explode from his skull and hit me. More rounds followed, all of them striking Lo in the side, riddling him with bullets while he inadvertently protected me from the barrage.

  “Get down!” Alter shouted.

  I was already moving, sliding from the bench to the floor under the table, hoping the thin metal was at least some insurance against taking a bullet. I didn’t think to reach for my gun, but I couldn’t see where the shooter was anyway.

  Alter’s legs disappeared from beneath the table as the bullets swept across the booth, my heart skipping as the thought of Matt being shot whipsawed through my mind. I looked up to see that he’d dropped belly down on the bench where Alter had been sitting. He had his gun in hand but couldn’t raise up to shoot it as rounds zinged through the air just above his body. They struck the far wall, punching through to the outside.

  The glass finally shattered as something much larger than a bullet slammed through it, shaking the entire booth as the small fragments of the barrier fell to the floor like raindrops. The shooter came into view through them. He didn’t look special in any way, though his clothes gave him a definite military appearance. He also wasn’t alone. An entire group of similarly dressed and equipped assholes had fanned out behind him, just the sight of them clearing out the bar ahead of the violence.

  That was all I had time to process before Alter landed between me and the shooter, having dived through the glass, without so much as a scratch. She swung her batons in a blur, absorbing or redirecting the rounds coming at us and then leaped in the air, leading with her foot as she cracked the lead shooter in the jaw. The rest of his fighters raised their rifles, all taking aim at Alter.

  “Come on,” I said to Matt, pulling my blaster as I crawled to the front of the booth and opened fire on them. Matt started firing from his prone position. Most of our shots went over their heads, but at least we were able to take some of the heat off Alter.

  I took aim, getting a bead on one of the men, my finger resting on the trigger. A split-second of uncertainty and then I squeezed the trigger, the blast hitting him square in the chest. He turned toward me and I fired again, hitting him center mass a second time, the round enough to paralyze him. He shuddered and fell unconscious to the floor, continuing to quiver.

  Of course, shooting at the bad guys also told them we were still there and still alive. A few of them turned their guns toward us, prepared to blow us to hell. Matt and I both made a break to escape the confined space, my eyes fixed on the attacker most likely to kill me. I fired a couple of blasts at him, missing by a lot as the first of his rounds came in, hitting the floor just in front of me.

  The bullets stopped coming at me as a metal disc, like a ninja star, zipped in, burying itself in his neck. He dropped his gun and sank to his knees, both hands grasping at the sudden wound.

  Staying low and moving laterally to the booths, around the curve of the structure, I sent a series of blasts at an adversary hiding behind an overturned table. The metal surface absorbed the first three shots, but the last one punched through the weakened metal, knocking that attacker down.

  Alter easily took out the last attacker as she ran for the door. “Stang, Hondo!” she shouted. “Grab the slab and let’s go!”

  “Got it!” Matt shouted, scooping up the device, amazingly still intact after the attack. He tucked it under his left arm like a football, jumping over one of the bodies and running to where I waited.Both of us headed for the exit, Alter meeting us there.

  All three of us came to a stop as the hatch slid open, revealing an armored guard standing there, rifle in hand. “Drop your weapons. Put your hands up.” Alter had already returned her batons to their holsters, but Matt and I still had our blasters in hand. We both looked to her for guidance. When she nodded, we dropped the guns.

  “What is this?” Alter said. “These jokers attacked us. The meeting place is supposed to be secured. What do you think will become of this DEX if it isn’t safe to do business here?”

  I couldn’t see the guard’s face behind his helmet, but I could hear a thin, muffled voice spilling out of a speaker inside it.

  “The Viceroy wants to speak to you,” he said.

  “Yi? Why? We’ve done nothing wrong. We were finalizing a standard contract.”

  “I don’t ask questions. I follow orders. This way.” He turned to the side to give us space to pass him. Closer to the path, a larger contingent of armored guards were making their way toward the building.

  “That’s a lot of guards,” Matt muttered beside me. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  “Murphy’s Law,” I replied softly. “If it can go wrong, it probably will.”

  Alter glanced at us, her eyes narrowed and sharp, her hand moving slowly toward one of the hard cases attached to her belt. She had told us nobody was dumb enough to pick a fight with Viceroy Yi. But what if the Viceroy picked a fight with us first?

  The only question was why. Did it have something to do with the slab Matt had under his arm? Or had he spoken to Sedaya? Either way, we were screwed.

  A shrill tone blared from Matt’s pocket as the alarm he had set on Head Case went off, signaling that someone was trying to get into the ship. The unexpected noise caused the guard to flinch.

  Alter didn’t waste the distraction.

  She lunged at him, batting his rifle away before he could fire. A baton slipped into her grip and activated. With her free hand, she pushed the guard’s helmet up and away, leaving the base of his thick neck bare. She sliced the baton across it before pulling his head back down and climbing onto his shoulders. Pushing him to the floor, she took his rifle as he fell.

  “Fall back!” she snapped, holstering her baton and bringing the rifle up. I paused to pick up my blaster before sprinting across the room as she opened fire, sending a barrage of plasma at the approaching reinforcements.

  “This is ridiculous,” Matt said as we ran. Alter moved aside as return fire poured through the door, the plasma blasts passing on either side of us. Matt and I reached the bar and vaulted over it, dropping down behind it to avoid the plasma toroids peppering the room. I found the bartender still cowering there.

  “Hello,” I said to him, offering a quick smile.

  He stared at me for a second before thrusting a knife at my face. I jerked backward, and the knife missed me. Before he could turn and come after me again, I grabbed a bottle off the bottom shelf and smashed it against his skull. He fell on me, out cold, the knife dropping from his hand.

  “Loser,” I said, shoving him off and getting back up into a crouch. Bent over, I followed the backside of the bar around to the end of it, Matt right behind me.

  “Where’s Alter?” Matt asked.

  “She can take care of herself,” I replied.

  “I hate this again.”

  “Me too.”

  We made it to the other side of the bar as the rain of blaster fire slowed, the guards becoming more cautious as they approached the entrance to the building. I could hear their heavy boots on the ground outside, along with the clacking of their armor against itself at the joints. It didn’t surprise me that I couldn’t hear Alter. If she dressed like a ninja and threw stars like a ninja, she was a ninja.

  “Get ready to run,” she said from somewhere in front of us. How had she gotten there? I poked my head up over the bar just in time to see her throw a wad of goop against the far wall at the back of the booths. She dove away before it exploded, blowing a hole in the wall and sending a thick wave of smoke and steam into the room. “Now!”

  I ran around the end of the bar, and Matt vaulted it a second time, both of us sprinting into the thick smoke, heading for the hole behind it as the guards poured into the front of the bar. They fanned out and once again opened fire. Plasma sizzled through the smoke, hitting the wall around us as we escaped through the hole.

  Alter waited outside.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked, breathing heavily. Whatever had made the smoke, it didn’t bother my lungs at all. Another ninja move.

  “Sedaya,” Alter replied. “It has to be. Only he has the power to convince Viceroy Yi to sacrifice his exchange to capture us.”

  “But Yi isn’t under his flag.”

  “That doesn’t always matter. Anyone can be bought for a high enough price.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just pay us for the Star?” Matt asked.

  “That’s not the point. Come on.”

  Alter led us away from the path toward the surrounding jungle. Shouting drew my attention upward, just in time to see more guards taking aim at us from the overhead walkways.

  “Move!” I shouted, practically pushing Matt ahead. We raced away from the center of the settlement, darting into a narrow alley between two of the buildings that were high enough to force the shooters up above them to move to a better position.

  Still running, we were nearly slammed when an Niflin mercenary swung out in front of us. Instead of a helmet, he wore a breathing apparatus on his back, with a small tube leading to his mouth. He had a pistol in each hand, his first round hitting Alter in the shoulder. She grunted and stumbled, nearly falling to her knees, when the second round struck her thigh. Raising my gun was almost instinct as I aimed and fired, catching the Niflin in the abdomen. The first blast slowed him down. My follow up round put him on the ground for good.

  “Alter,” I said, catching up to her. She was bent over, one hand clutching her leg.

  “I’m okay,” she replied. “Flesh wounds.”

  “How are we going to get back to the ship?” Matt asked. “They’ll be waiting there for us.”

  “We don’t need to go to the ship. We can bring the ship to us. First, we need to get away from security.”

  “This entire island can’t be more than a hundred acres,” Matt said. “How are we supposed to get clear?”

  “The jungle’s small but dense. It’ll be easy to disappear. We need to make a break for the foliage.” She pointed to the edge of the jungle, just past another open gap behind the buildings we were tucked between. “I’ll put down smoke to hide us. Go as fast as you can, and don’t stop until you see the water. Are you ready?”

  “Ready,” I said.

  Alter reached into the case on her belt, withdrawing a small black marble and underhanded it across the alley into the intersection. It activated when it hit the ground, spewing thick smoke in every direction.

  “Go!” she said, turning around as the guards reached the opposite end of the alley. Matt and I both hesitated as she raced toward the soldiers, shouting back over her shoulder. “I’ll catch up! Do it!”

  I didn’t want to leave her, but she was probably better off without us weighing her down. We broke for the smoke and the jungle beyond, sprinting away as plasma fire sizzled behind us.

  We escaped into the jungle, leaving Alter behind.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I ran as fast as I could through the brush, doing my best not to trip on the roots or get tangled in thick branches. Matt’s footsteps confirmed he remained close behind, following me through the dense vegetation and away from the settlement.

  The gunfire stopped behind us, and for a moment I was ready to slow down, take a breather, and wait for Alter to catch up. I couldn’t believe this was happening. That a short excursion to a planet where we should have been relatively anonymous had gone sideways so quickly and completely. It seemed like fate decided it had a cruel joke to play and had picked me to act it out. Buy a real, working spaceship and go to another galaxy, only to wind up a criminal being hunted at every turn. Maybe it would make for a good movie, but otherwise it sucked.

  And yet, a part of me was really enjoying this. Had the tumor done something to alter my emotional state?

  The gunfire started again, only it was closer now. The plasma rounds hissed through the brush, hitting the trees to my left. The bad news was that the guards had followed us. The good news was that they apparently had no idea where we actually were. They were firing blindly, perhaps hoping to scare us into surrendering.

  Fat chance.

  We kept running, delving deeper into the greenery. I heard the guards moving into the jungle behind us, giving chase as we ran but already a good distance behind. Their armor was too heavy and clunky to let them traverse the thick vegetation with ease. There was no way they would catch up. That didn’t stop them from trying, and it didn’t stop them from shooting. Plasma continued lighting up the mild darkness beneath the dense canopy, rounds streaking through nowhere near the mark. The effort was so poor it would have been comical if only one hit from a round in the back wouldn’t be fatal.

  A minute passed. Then another. Then another. After five minutes, we were still running hard, navigating the jungle as best we could. It occurred to me that I would never have been able to run like this before the sickbay treatments and my meds. Maybe the cancer was still in me, but I felt completely well. That was my silver lining.

  The guards fell further back, finally giving up shooting at us. I kept going anyway, breathing hard, my stamina beginning to fade. Alter had said not to stop until I saw the water, and I trusted her advice. And hoped she was okay. It felt awful to abandon her, and I had to remind myself she was better off without having to worry about me and Matt.

  Light began shining through the trees ahead, signaling we were near the edge of the jungle. I slowed a little then, just enough to be able to shoot if guards waited on the other side of the last line of trees. The water had to be close. I could smell the salty air. Only another few hundred feet to go.

  Reaching the last stretch of vegetation, I pushed through a growth of large leaves, the water coming into full view, the ground dropping off into a steep, rocky slope right in front of me.

  I frantically hit the brakes, almost nose-diving over the edge. My gun flew from my hand and bounced over the cliff as I turned and dropped to my hands and knees. I grabbed at loose pebbles and embedded rocks to keep from sliding off what had to be a hundred-foot high cliff. I lost purchase when the pebbles rolled beneath my left hand. My right slipped off a larger embedded rock. I dug my fingers into the dirt, fighting to hang on as my toes slid over the edge, the rest of me threatening to follow.

  “Ben!” Matt shouted, diving out of the woods and stretching his hand out toward mine, only to come up a few inches short. I gritted my teeth, finding just enough arm strength to propel myself forward and grab hold of his wrist. “Hold on,” he grated, grasping my wrist. He twisted around to dig in his heels and push while he pulled himself back with his free hand, bringing me up with him. Within a few seconds, I was sitting on the ground next to the cliff edge.

  “Shit, that was close,” I wheezed, doing my best to catch my breath and calm my racing heart.

  “Alter said see the water, not jump into it,” Matt replied. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “I scared the hell out of me.” I paused to breathe. “Do you think they’re still following us?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. I left my gun back at the bar.”

  “I dropped mine over the cliff when I fell.”

  Matt reached down to his boot, retrieving a long knife. “I still have this. These boots weren’t completely useless.”

  I laughed off some of my tension as quietly as I could. “Are you okay with stabbing somebody with that thing?”

  “Kill or be killed,” Matt replied. “They were shooting at us. I thought you were over that?”

  “It’s different to shoot someone versus stabbing them. Stabbing is more up close and personal.”

  “If you say so. And yeah, I’m ready to use it to protect us.”

  A rustle in the brush captured our attention. I moved into a crouch, and Matt did the same, holding the knife out in front as though it could magically ward off whatever was coming at us.

  “It might be Alter,” I suggested.

  “I hope so,” he whispered back.

  We moved back to the trees, tucking in behind a trunk as the rustling moved closer. We both waited there, pressed against the bark, Matt ready to swing out and stab whoever turned the corner.

  The rustling stopped on the other side of the tree, disappearing as if it had never been there at all. I turned my head toward Matt’s. Our eyes met, both of us confused. We strained to hear any movement, but the jungle had gone silent. Too silent. There should have been chirps and squawks and other noises. Someone was definitely there. Waiting for us to come out?

  Neither one of us moved. Let it come to us; we weren’t about to reveal ourselves.

  A minute passed. Another. The silence remained, keeping me on edge. I looked at Matt again, about to whisper a suggestion that we attack the area where we had last heard movement from both sides of the tree. Something dripped onto my forehead, thick and wet and smelly. I tipped my head back and stared up at a catlike creature with the largest teeth I’d ever seen.

  Seeing me seeing it, the creature’s jaws opened further, no doubt ready to snap forward and take my entire head off in one bite. Before it could, a blue creature no more than six inches long—it reminded me of a cross between a tarsier monkey and a flying squirrel—sailed in and glommed onto the side of the bigger creature’s head, clinging there, over its left eye, as it made a high pitched buzzing sound. The big creature gurgled, went stiff, and fell out of the tree, bouncing off my shoulder and onto the ground. The blue creature remained attached to the now dead one, covering its eye.

  “What the hell?” Matt whispered, pressed tight against the trunk. He hadn’t seen the thing over our heads before it fell.

  “We need to get out of here,” I replied softly. “That blue thing just killed it.”

  The blue creature moved before we could, raising its large head to look up at us with huge eyes. It would have been one of the cutest things I’d ever seen if it didn’t have a pair of fangs sticking too far out of its tiny mouth.